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Live: Ciara, “Promise” at the South Street Seaport

Ciara has had a rough couple of years. There's famously been problems with her record label and an album, Basic Instinct, that performed worse on the charts than any other she's put out. But try telling that to her fans. They don't care. Ciara is beloved, a private pop star for a devoted audience who has stuck with her for so many songs. Goodies came out in 2004! And she's still here when so many others have gone.

Last week she performed an outdoor concert at a small space near the southern tip of Manhattan for Malibu Rum's Station Invasion Tour, which was something of a greatest hits collection from the past seven years. She did all the bangers with all the dance moves you remember and have probably, at some point, tried to imitate. And it was great, every moment of it a giant sing-a-long for people dancing and taking so many iPhone photos. We even saw a boy crying big tears. At the very end of the show, the applause was so loud she seemed to get overwhelmed and paused for a minute, a nice moment to shake off a bad year.